(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for the on-line selection of a virtual eyeglass frame.
(2) Prior Art
Known systems already allow a user to choose a pair of glasses and, in particular, frames for glasses, using so-called on-line services in the form of for example client-server applications accessible over a communication network such as the Internet.
These on-line services offer an integrated simulation environment in which the person can try on in a virtual fashion a number of different eyeglass frames on a demonstration face or on his or her own face in a virtual representation, for example on a computer screen on which the application is running.
Some of these services also enable the price of the pair of glasses to be simulated from a virtual frame selected by this process, by allowing the patient to input the correction parameters for the choice of corrective lenses adapted to his or her vision.
However, these on-line services are primarily offered to the patient as a guide, to help the patient through the process of selecting eyeglasses, essentially on the basis of esthetics and price, but they do not save him the trouble of then coming out physically to an optician to confirm the choice of frame and determine his or her ophthalmic parameters, which will make it possible to make up his or her corrective lenses adapted to the selected frame.
The reason for this is that, in order to ensure the maximum comfort of the patient when wearing the frame fitted with these corrective lenses, it is important, among other things, that the optical centers of the eyes coincide exactly with the optical centers of the corresponding corrective lenses. It is therefore essential to know in particular the distance between the pupils of the eyes of the patient and said frame. Determining these ophthalmic parameters of the patient as precisely as possible so that the corrective lenses can be centered relative to the patient's eyes clearly requires that the frame to which the corrective lenses are to be fitted must be precisely adjusted to the patient's face.
The problem is that it is not possible in the simulation environment referred to above to adjust the virtual frame in any precise way to the face of the patient in a virtual representation.
It is for this reason that the virtual selection of an eyeglass frame requiring corrective lenses must inevitably be followed up by confirmation and checking by a professional optician so that the latter can adjust the corresponding physical frame accurately to the patient's face, the object being to take the measurements required to work out the various parameters for adjusting and positioning the corrective lenses in the selected frame, and thus make up corrective lenses adapted to the patient and to the selected frame.
At present, although they can make it possible for a patient to remotely select an eyeglass frame on essentially esthetic criteria, the aforementioned on-line services do not therefore allow this selection to be validated and an order to be placed directly remotely for a pair of eyeglasses comprising the selected frame in which the corrective lenses adapted to the patient are fitted. The problem with doing this is basically the fact that the positioning, particularly in the vertical direction, of the selected vertical frame on the vertical representation of the face is highly uncertain, thus preventing the accurate determination of the patient's ophthalmic parameters which are needed in order to make up his or her corrective lenses adapted to the morphology of his or her face and to the selected frame.